The present invention relates to a pick-up unit for withdrawing cigarette samples from a mass of cigarettes. The cigarettes coming off machinery, such as manufacturing or filter assembly machines, are known to be supplied to packing machines along conveyor belts, on which the cigarettes are arranged crosswise in relation to the traveling direction of the belts, and are stacked one on top of the other to form a layer of substantially uniform thickness in excess of the diameter of each individual cigarette. The standard practice, at present, is for one or more cigarettes to be removed manually, at regular time intervals, from the mass traveling along the conveyor belt, either for the purpose of inspection or for supply to automatic quality control equipment designed to supply data for calibrating machinery upstream from the conveyor belts.
Such manual withdrawal, however, has been found to involve a number of drawbacks, especially when the cigarettes are withdrawn in bunches. Due to the highly delicate nature of the cigarettes, in fact, manual withdrawal frequently results in damage, such as crushing, tearing of the paper, or loss of tobacco from the ends, which, during inspection or quality control, may lead to an erroneous interpretation of the quality of the cigarettes being produced, and, at times, erroneous adjustment of the manufacturing or filter assembly machines upstream from the conveyor belt.